[gnso-vi-feb10] A question about (or challenge to) the utility of PIR's threshold

[Eric Brunner-Williams <ebw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A question was addressed to Kathy during the call, asking for the
purpose, expressed in harms avoided, for PIR's proposed point of
transition from operation in exception to Recommendation 19 to
operation consistent with Recommendation 19.

Because of the framing of the question, I didn't hear the answer which
I think is the correct answer. The point of an exception is to create,
with the approval of the Registrar Constituency, a market that would
otherwise not exist.

The "harm" which the exception is intended to address is lack of any
means for would be registrants, and a registry, of transacting a
registration.

It is attractive, in terms of advocacy by any means, to assert that
there is no registrant harm in a threshold of X registrations.
However, it is not helpful to convert the purpose of a feature of a
competing proposal into a non-purpose, and then find it ineffective in
its non-purpose.

I don't think exceptions are necessary, and I think the proposed
exception sizes, 50k for PIR's proposal, 100k for MIT's proposal (in
the public comments), 100k in Jon Nevett's original at the December
2008 WDC CRAI Consultancy, all will be very hard sells to the
Registrar Constituency, and may cause the Intellectual Property
Constituency some reflection on what "values" drive an interest in
five to six figure total value capture by the exception seeking registry.

A few thousands, yes. The RC today is not the same as it was in 2001,
when the maiming of the original sTLDs took place. They want product
that has a market, just as registries want to market a product.

It is not helpful to try and find the safeguards in some number
offered as an initial threshold for exception, as the exceptions are
not framed as correcting harm arising from bad acts concealed within
registrations, but as correcting the harm arising from a complete
inability to have registrations, with, or without bad acts.

Eric